


Like A Chapel In A Hospital

by scarredsodeep



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Band, Amnesia, Coma, Engagement, Fluff, Hospitals, Humor, M/M, Meet the Family, Mistaken Identity, long live the car crash hearts, this is my While You Were Sleeping riff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-25 12:37:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10764420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep
Summary: Patrick meets the love of his life when he hits him with his car. Through a series of escalating awkwardnesses, he ends up posing as the man's fiance. But what will he do when Peter Wentz wakes from his coma?For Bandom Bingo 2017. Prompt: amnesia.Bonus:Companion playlistbased on songs Pete has talked about in various interviews.





	1. Chapter 1

Patrick Stump is on his way to work on a typical Wednesday morning when his life changes forever.

The day is dreary and grey, the city streets slick with rain. Patrick is eating a microwave breakfast burrito and he’s just a gotten to the frozen spot that is always, no matter what he does, in the middle. He’s thinking that frozen burritos are the perfect metaphor for his depressing life and that his crap job is definitely a frozen spot. A glob of reconstituted egg and beans takes a sudden dive out of the tortilla and onto Patrick’s slacks (grey today, to match the fucking weather). He is distracted, looking away from the road, steadying the wheel with one knee, trying to find a napkin to save his pants from an orange grease stain and attempting to corral the rest of the burrito, which has begun to dribble out of both ends, and—

And Patrick glances up at the road and sees the most beautiful man he’s ever laid eyes on. Patrick sees him one millisecond before Patrick hits him with his car.

In a flurry of panic, Patrick parks the car in the middle of traffic and bursts out of it. The burrito he just throws in the opposite direction, as far away from him as possible. He’s never eating one of _those_ again. They’re mankillers.

He’s kneeling over the stranger, trying to provide first aid without actually knowing first aid. The beautiful man is not obviously broken in any way Patrick can see, but there’s blood on his forehead and chin from where he hit the pavement, and he’s unconscious. Very unconscious. Nonresponsive.

Patrick finds himself crouching at the stranger’s head, trying to cradle it without moving it because the 911 operator is saying that as long as the man is breathing, Patrick shouldn’t risk moving him. A small crowd has gathered. Patrick still has burrito on his pants. All he can take in through all the panic and disaster is the bleeding, angelic face of his victim.

He won’t wake up. Patrick finally meets the best-looking man in Chicago, the potential love of his life, and what does Patrick do? He fucking _kills_ him.

He’s pretty sure this is not how meet-cutes are supposed to go.

The 911 operator tells him to find the stranger’s wallet, search for identification. The gathered populace looks rather scandalized at Patrick’s groping through the man’s pockets til he finds an ID and insurance card.

“Hello, Peter Wentz,” Patrick says to the unconscious man. Someone has given him a wad of tissue; he gently dabs at the blood on Peter Wentz’s face. “I can’t believe I ran over my soulmate.”

Ambulance, sirens, paramedics, hospital. It’s all a blur. Patrick nods and signs and agrees to whatever keeps him by Peter’s side. “Be careful with him,” he tells the paramedics shining lights in Peter’s eyes in the back of the ambulance. “That’s the love of my life.”

Patrick is in shock. He is awash in jagged adrenaline. He is in an equal and opposite guilt-and-horror coma. The burrito stain on his pants taunts him like the blood on Lady Macbeth’s gloves. Patrick is becoming insensible.

Patrick glues himself to Peter’s side—guilt is highly adhesive—and stays there, til he’s clasping the unconscious man’s hand beside his hospital bed, watching the steady crags of the heart monitor, listening to the ICU resident explain that Peter Wentz is in a coma. Patrick is responsible for Peter, now. If they let him, he will stand here forever.

Why are they letting him, though? Shouldn’t they have kicked him out by now? Are they holding him until the police get here to arrest him? He’s all but killed this man. Surely he’ll be sent to prison.

But the next person through the door is a nurse who gives Patrick a Styrofoam cup of coffee and squeezes his arm. “Oh, sweetie. They’ll take him for a brain scan soon. His reflexes are intact—that’s good, it means the coma isn’t too deep. Let him hear your voice. He’ll find him way back to you.”

Patrick doesn’t know why his voice should be of particular comfort—unless maybe Peter’s anger at being the victim of a vehicular strike will spur him to consciousness—but he is grateful for the coffee and the kindness. It has been a harrowing morning. He hasn’t even called his boss yet. He wants to find out if he’s being arrested before he opens himself up to lots of managerial yelling.

Medical staff bustles in and out, checking Peter’s chart, taking readings and various fluids. They all offer Patrick sympathetic, encouraging looks or touches. He doesn’t know what else to do in this situation, so he sits down and begins to talk to Peter. He tells Peter about himself, his day, the burrito incident, his childhood, the weather, his job—anything that crosses his mind. He tells Peter how beautiful he is. He describes what their first date might have been like, had they met under different circumstances. He described the date he’d like to take Peter on, should he wake up. And above all, he pleads, reasons, bullies, and begs Peter: wake up, wake up, wake up.

“Please, please, just open your eyes. I have such a beautiful life lined up for us. Soulmates, Peter. Just look at you. Come back. Wake up. Please, Peter. Please.” This is what he’s saying, imploring passionately and clasping the man’s limp hand to his chest, when the family of Peter Wentz bursts into the room.

In retrospect, Patrick should thank his fucking stars it’s not a stylish wife with a gaggle of doting children. But he’s too busy sinking into the earth with horror and humiliation when the RN says, “He’s in good hands in there with his partner.”

Patrick is _not_ this man’s partner. He’s just the guy who hit Peter with his car. He could be described as Peter’s assailant, maybe. The perpetrator. But before he can say it, he’s pulled into the soggy embrace of a wailing middle-aged woman with hair and eyes to match Peter’s. Another woman, younger and grave-faced, stands back with her arms crossed over her chest. There is something of Peter about her face, too; Patrick hopes desperately she’s a sister and not a girlfriend. Things could get very Jerry Springer in here.

“Partner, huh?” drawls the young woman. She looks unimpressed.

Patrick is convinced this is the moment the charade ends, probably with the words ‘reprehensible pervert’ and ‘this is a heterosexual man.’ Instead, the woman pulverizing him into her bosom says, “You must be the fiancé he’s been so secretive about. Oh, honey. I’m Dale—I’m the mother. Don’t be afraid to hold me, now. We’re as good as family.”

Patrick opens his mouth to say—something, probably along the lines of ‘this is a terrible misunderstanding,’ but the words that come out taste like sawdust and sound like “My name is Patrick, Patrick Stump. It’s an honor to meet you, Mrs. Wentz. I just wish it was under better circumstances.”

The maybe-sister has no interest in pleasantries. She sits down on the edge of Peter’s bed and says, “So they’re saying it was a hit and run.”

Hating himself more with each passing second, Patrick goes ahead and holds his tongue.

*

Patrick ends up staying the night in the hospital. After spending all day with the Wentz family (who  are totally lovely, making it that much worse), comforting assorted relatives and waiting on medical scans and telling lies about how he and Peter met, he starts to _feel_ like the fiancé. He becomes the expert in the room on Peter’s medical condition, and on his recent life. He’s been avoiding his family for about a month now, apparently, which is incredibly convenient given the absurd lie Patrick can’t see his way out of sustaining. They are all so frightened Peter will die, or never wake up, or wake up damaged and different. They cling to Patrick for comfort. He feels like—he feels like since he’s the one who tried to manslaughter their son, he owes them whatever comfort he can provide. Even if that means he has to lie. Even if he has to lie his ass off.

There are some hiccups (Hillary, a sister after all saying, “You call him Peter? No one’s called him Peter since he was 4 years old”; Patrick having no idea what’s become of his car and continuing to avoid his boss’s calls; ad-libbing answers to important questions like “so which church do you two belong to?”, “when’s the wedding?”, and “are you two planning to adopt?”) but overall he finds himself settling into the role. He _does_ feel connected to the sleeper. He also feels responsible for him. And Dale doesn’t want Peter—Pete—to spend the night alone, and Patrick doesn’t really want to leave him, and anyway he’s not going to let a woman in her 60s sleep in a chair in a hospital.

So he’s the one who’s there in the middle of the night when suddenly, the unconscious man wakes up.

Patrick is jolted from his fitful sleep by the shriek of the heart rate monitor. For a horrible moment he thinks Pete is flatlining and cries out, “Peter! Oh my god, Pete!”

Then he sees round, wide eyes shining in the darkness. Pete sits up in the bed, sweaty and tousled with the heart monitor pads in his hands. He looks terrified. “Who are you?” he demands. Patrick’s heart lurches sickly. He’s told an awful lot of detailed, preposterous lies to Pete’s grieving family members in the last 24 hours. This is about to get very awkward. Is he a literal fucking sociopath? But then, voice rising, Pete asks, “Who’s Pete?”

And Patrick knows he’s in the clear. He feels a burst of hot, shameful relief in his chest. Definitely a sociopath.

Two residents and a crash cart burst through the door before Patrick decides how best to begin extricating himself from this situation.

“He’s awake,” Patrick says needlessly to one of the docs.

“Where am I? What is happening? Am I supposed to know who the fuck this guy is?” Pete is sounding more and more frantic.

The resident fussing with the EKG leads pauses in her work to say, “It’s okay, honey. It’s just a little posttraumatic amnesia. The important thing is you’re awake. This is Patrick—your fiancé. There’s been an accident…”

*

Pete is whisked away for more tests and scans before they get the chance to have their first-ever conversation, the one where Patrick presumably finds a way to explain to a stranger with amnesia how they came to be betrothed.

He paces Pete’s hospital room while Pete is gone, wracked with guilt and indecision. He wants to come clean, or at least escape. But every time he comes close to running out the door he thinks of Peter Wentz’s beautiful gold-brown face, blooded; Peter Wentz’s memory, identity, and self, forgotten; Peter Wentz’s adoring family, especially his frightened mother who had clung to Patrick like he was her last hope of ever being close to her son again.

And he thinks of Peter Wentz coming back to this room, confused and alone, knowing nothing about himself but what the nurses say: that he was hit by a car, that something undetermined is wrong with his brain, that he has a fiancé and that person is gone.

Damn it. He promised he’d call Dale if anything changed. Patrick knows exactly what he needs to do.

He wants to fucking bolt. Instead he takes out his cell phone and calls Peter Wentz’s mother.

*

First thing the next morning, Patrick’s lying again. He has to tell his boss _something_ , so he goes with the reigning deception. He feels rather helpless about the whole affair. “It’s my fiancé,” he lies into the phone. “He’s been hit by a car. He’s just woken from a coma.”

This is an amazingly effective lie. Patrick’s boss is not even mad that Patrick was AWOL yesterday. Instead, Patrick’s boss insists he take the rest of the week off. She says, “You’re approved for as much family leave as you need. Just come back when you can. And if there’s anything I can do to help…”

Patrick should have started lying years ago. Everyone is being so kind to him. He’s gone from being unloved and alone, eating pathetic burritos that aren’t even fully cooked, with a boss who hates him and a job that makes him feel nothing, to being a man with a beautiful fiancé, loving, involved in-laws, paid family leave and a compassionate employer. And all it took was hitting a man with his car and then lying his ass off about it.

Patrick considers again whether all this makes him a psychopath. He tries not to worry about it. Keeping all these falsehoods straight, especially now that Peter is awake, is more than enough to grapple with.

Patrick would really appreciate, like, a fucking minute alone with his alleged fiancé, but he’s not getting it. Before Peter’s returned to the room, his entire extended family arrives, armed with balloons and baskets of muffins and flower arrangements. Dale Wentz leads the charge, marches right up to Patrick and throws her arms around him.

He can’t even remember the last time he was hugged by someone other than Peter’s mother.

“Everyone, I want you to meet Patrick, my future son-in-law,” she announces. The swarm of in-laws closes in, exclaiming and hugging and pressing muffins on him. Patrick is enveloped in goodwill he does not deserve. For the first time he starts to apprehend how truly fucked he really is.


	2. Chapter 2

They tell him his name is Pete Wentz. They tell him he works as a political journalist. They tell him he’s engaged to be married to the angel-faced stranger who was in his room when he woke up. They tell him he’s a hobbyist poet, recently published in the _Chicago Review_. They tell him he lives in a loft in Boystown with his dog.

He doesn’t know if he believes them. Some of it sounds—not quite familiar, but _right_ , like Wednesday following Tuesday feels right. The rest of it sounds like someone else’s life.

The question of what he remembers is a complicated one. He sits in the middle of a field of fog. If he tries to look closely at any part of his life, it gets fuzzier and fuzzier. If he just relaxes and allows his past to be there, like the vague outlines of trees on the edge of the field, some of it gets more solid.

They tell him his name is Pete, and he has no recollection of whether this is true. The name feels as right as any, and less wrong than some. For example, he is relatively certain he is not a Reginald. Nor does he feel like a Steve. His mother, who he knows and recognizes and trusts, shows him his driver’s license. He believes it.

He remembers journalism, when he relaxes and lets it be; bits and flashes of college writing seminars, attending press releases, waving his badge around, typing in his office late into the night, playing and replaying sound bytes from his digital recorder, worn-soled shoes and ink-stained hands.

Poetry, a pet dog: these are fuzzier, feel far less true. He starts to get agitated about the memory gaps; the harder he struggles, the thicker and more frightening the fog. Being engaged is safer ground. He even remembers proposing, getting down on one knee in a lit-up botanical garden on a snowy night. The way the holiday lights danced on gold, sparked and shone the diamonds in the outstretched band. He clings to this memory for its detail, its specificity, the surge of positive emotion that it brings. He thinks it is his most recent memory.

The only problem is, he has no recollection whatsoever of this person who they say is named Patrick. This simulacrum fiancé stands out like a cuckoo’s egg. A perfect match, indistinguishable from all the rest, but—there’s something, isn’t there? In the center of all these cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, his is the only face that is unfamiliar. He badly wants to be alone with this person, try to pick up the thread that binds them—because although he doesn’t recognize him, Patrick _feels_ right. He feels safe with him, like he’s known him a long time.

He wants to remember.

*

The day is an exhausting blur of doctors and family and plastic trays of unappealing food. It turns out his body is largely unharmed: bruised and contused, achy and scraped, but struck at a low speed by whatever asshole hit him. The real damage is not from the car but the pavement, the place he struck his head.

His brain is swollen, possibly damaged in an as-yet-unspecified way. This is the scariest thing he can imagine: that his brain will not heal. That his memories will not come back. That he will never come in from the fog.

Patrick has been dispatched to his alleged loft, to rescue his dog and bring back personal items that will jog his memory. He desperately wants Patrick to return: he feels somehow that Patrick must hold the key to him, that if he only remembers this person he loves enough to spend the rest of his life with, he will remember himself too.

So he looks forward all day to the chance to be alone with Patrick, only to find, when the moment finally comes, it is—terribly, terribly awkward. Because not only does he not remember Patrick, but Patrick acts like he doesn’t remember _him_.

“So, um,” he says into the silence that’s settled now that his family has left the room. He has no idea what to say. This is the first time they’ve been alone, the first conversation they’ll ever have in his entire memory. Where do you even begin? How badly does your brain have to be damaged to forget an entire fiancé? “You’re Patrick. I’m sorry I don’t—um. Remember.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” says Patrick. His tone is hard to read. Whatever Patrick-knowledge he has, it’s not coming back intuitively. Appearing to realize how dour he sounded, Patrick adds, “And you’re Pete.”

Hearing it from Patrick’s (plush, pink, ridiculous) lips, suddenly it feels right. The name. _Pete_. For the first time since he opened his eyes, he thinks of himself that way. It’s like Patrick spoke it, made it true.

Pete—yes, Pete; god, what a relief to know he’s really _Pete_ —fumbles on. “My dog. How is—she? He?”

“He,” says Patrick. “Definitely he. He’s feeling, uh, assertive today.”

Pete has a flicker of recollection of a large white poof of a dog, loving and harmless except for when he asserts dominance through humping. But should that happen with someone the animal knows well? Pete reaches too hard for the memory and it’s gone again, lost in the fog. Fuck, this is frustrating.

“Here,” says Patrick, and thumps a backpack onto the bed. Patrick, Pete notes, is pink of cheek and avoidant of eye contact. He’s very handsome. Patrick’s skin, where it is not flushed, is gossamer-pale and oh-so-bruiseable. His eyes are blue-green-gold and his mouth, frankly, defies credulity. He’s not at all the type Pete usually goes for, at least in the part of his life he can remember, but he’s glad he made the change.

Pete wishes he remembered what it felt like, kissing this man. What he tasted like. What he looked like sleeping.

But it’s all blank. Snow static. No record found.

Patrick’s ears are pink too, almost exactly like he knows what Pete’s thinking about. He’s unloading the pack haphazardly, thrusting at Pete objects that must be of special sentimental value, about which he feels mostly—nothing. A flannel shirt, a framed picture of the Samoyed, a worn leatherbound book that he recognizes as his poem journal but cannot recall writing in.

“I have a diary, don’t I?” Pete asks, remembering. If he could read that, surely it would jog loose his enshrouded memories.

“You stopped keeping one,” Patrick says sharply. “I mean, I think.”

Clothes, books from his bedside table, a Guns ‘n’ Roses coffee mug—some items he recognizes as treasures; others seem like randomly collected flotsam. “I wasn’t sure what would help,” says Patrick apologetically, proffering a He-Man action figure. “It was kind of overwhelming. I just started grabbing… everything.”

Pete fishes a silver necklace with a winged heart charm from the rummage sale Patrick has dumped onto his bed. Someone special gave this to him, he remembers. It has special significance. He just can’t quite remember—

“This must be from you,” he decides aloud, fastening it around his neck. It settles naturally against his chest, a welcome weight. “I almost remember.”

Patrick looks terribly uncomfortable. Pete considers how hurtful this all must be, his not remembering. He abandons the useless tangle of mementos and photographs and reaches instead for Patrick’s hands.

Patrick jerks away.

Pete bites his lip. He has an awful feeling in his gut and can’t remember why. “Patrick—do I call you Patrick? Do I have any nicknames for you? Annoying ones, like—Patcakes?”

“Definitely no,” Patrick says. Patrick stares at him helplessly. “Any and all terrible nicknames can remain forgotten.”

“Okay, then. Patrick. Patrick, are things… okay between us? It feels a little off, but I can’t remember what it’s meant to feel like, so…”

Patrick’s rose-tinged face goes white and wracked. Pete doesn’t know him that well—can’t remember knowing him that well, anyway—but he can tell this face means there have been problems. He feels so helpless, knowing he must love this man and knowing that he’s hurt but lacking any memory of why or how to offer comfort. The fog thickens with his frustration.

Pete doesn’t remember Patrick but he does know he can’t bear to see him suffer. He takes Patrick’s hand; Patrick jolts in his skin, but allows it this time. A blast of electric current jumps through them. Yes, Pete’s sure: he may not remember Patrick, but he loves him very fucking much.

Pete says the kindest thing he can, given the circumstances. “I _feel_ it. I can feel what you mean to me. I remember asking you to marry me. I remember how powerfully in love I felt that night. Even if the rest of it never comes back, Patcakes—” the corner of his mouth bares his teeth in a grin; he feels sure teasing Patrick is one of his favorite pastimes—“we have this. I feel this.”

He squeezes Patrick’s hand. Patrick’s whole arm is so tense; Pete can tell how hard he’s trying not to pull away. Patrick gives a watery smile. Rather than comforted, the man looks nauseous.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Patrick asks suddenly. There is a fleck of flame in his sea-green eyes.

Pete laughs; he must be joking. Pete gestures to himself, encompassing the open-assed hospital gown, the heart monitor and saline drip, the hospital bed and scary array of inscrutable, ominously beeping machinery. “Because I’m so portable.”

“No, I mean it,” says Patrick. He jumps up, seizes a wheelchair from the corner of the room, wheels it over to the side of the bed. “Get in the chair, Wentz. I’m busting you out. I’m going crazy in here.”

*

Half an hour later, Pete and his IV stand are being wheeled down a bustling Chicago street. He’s wearing the flannel shirt and a pilfered blanket over his hospital gown, trying not to look like a fugitive. Patrick buys him a street hot dog, loaded with onions and relish and yellow mustard. It is fucking delicious.

Picking poppy seeds out of his teeth, Pete remembers hot dogs and pizza and gyros and caramel corn. He remembers watching Cubs games from rooftops, remembers Oak Street beach with frozen waves, remembers looking out over his city from the top of the ferris wheel at Navy Pier. He remembers hours spent in record stores, towering dusty shelves of multi-story used bookstores, lion statues outside art museums, Bulls games and hockey and fireworks over Soldier Field, gnarled old trees and dark brick walk-ups, street festivals and music in parks. Ten minutes out here return a lifetime of textured, street-level memories to him. Patrick has given him Chicago back.

“This is the best date I can ever remember going on,” Pete jokes. He is gratified by the warm, rich sound of Patrick’s laugh. After just one day in the fishbowl of tests and family panic and head pain and his terrifying inability to remember—being outside, out in a normal environment, being a person and not an acute brain damaged patient for just a few minutes—god, it feels good. He had no idea how claustrophobic and afraid he was getting in that room til Patrick broke him out of it.

He knows they’ll have to go back before long—knows there is something very wrong with him and he needs the medical attention—but for now, he can really _breathe_ again. He feels _happy_. He feels hopeful.

He feels exactly how he fell in love with Patrick, even though he can’t remember doing it.

“I’m so lucky to have you,” Pete says suddenly. Patrick is quiet behind the wheelchair. Pete wishes he could see Patrick’s face.

Patrick pushes him through a tiny city park, a corner lot turned green with oak trees and thick grass. Patrick wheels him towards a bench where a heavily tattooed man sits with a large white dog. As they draw nearer, the dog leaps to his feet, his whole body wagging with the force of his tail, and starts barking.

Memory crashes into Pete. He’s collided with something in the fog. The man drops the leash; the dog bounds towards him. “Bowie!” Pete cries, not knowing the name til it bursts from his lips. He remembers Bowie as a puppy, a ball of white fluff that peed on everything; he remembers the awkward leggy teenage phase, Bowie and his small farts taking up more than their fair share of the bed; he remembers a very handsome, very angry guy holding up the chewed tatters of gold shoes and hollering at the cowering pup, and Pete putting himself between the two; he remembers a thousand walks, ten thousand snuggles. He remembers the red wine, white fur incident. He remembers, all at once, several years of the joys and tribulations of dog ownership. His heart explodes, sending shrapnel of love out all around him.

Bowie jumps up, getting his front half painfully in Pete’s lap, licking tears and laughter off Pete’s face. Pete buries his face and hands in his dog’s fur, and he remembers.

When Pete looks up at last, Patrick and his confederate stand awkwardly off to the side, watching. Patrick is grinning helplessly, his ears bright pink. His eyes keep getting stuck on Pete.

He distinctly hears the words, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were _engaged_ ,” before Patrick says loudly, “Pete, this is Andy.”

“I’m not supposed to remember you, am I?” Pete asks sheepishly, his arms still wrapped tight around his happy, beautiful dog.

“No,” says Andy irritably. “I’m just Patrick’s best friend. Why would I have ever met his _fianc_ _é_?” Andy has his tattooed arms crossed over his chest. He’s very muscly. Behind his scowl and sunglasses, he looks handsome.

“In that case, I’m glad to finally meet you,” Pete says. He tries to sound as likeable as possible. He wonders if he should feel jealous. It should probably hurt his feelings, that Patrick’s been keeping him like a secret. Maybe that’s what they’d been fighting about, before the accident.

All at once Pete decides he’s glad it’s forgotten, whatever the conflict was. Patrick broke him out of the hospital to reunite him with his dog. Patrick brought him a hopeful jumble of his belongings. Patrick has been sleeping at his side in two pushed-together chairs without complaint, even though Pete woke with no idea who Patrick was. Pete is going to _marry_ this man. Whatever they’d been fighting about is unimportant. It belongs to a forgotten past. They’ve got their whole lives to resolve it, to learn how to love each other as wholly and well as humanly possible. His heart shines with it. He holds Bowie to his chest and beams at Patrick. In that moment he is completely and perfectly happy.

“Patrick,” he says, the idea coming out of his mouth as it occurs to him, “will you marry me?”

“Um,” says Patrick. “I mean. I must have already answered that?”

“No, no,” Pete goes on. He’s grinning to split his face in two. He laughs, just because he’s so happy. This feels more right than anything has, since he woke up in a hospital bed with chunks of his life and self missing. “Will you marry me _today_? I have this—fresh start. It’s the first day of the rest of my life. I want to spend it getting married to you.”

“There are—things you should know about our relationship, before—” Patrick’s face is stuck somewhere between horror and longing. Pete can feel the tension of it, can feel him wanting to say yes at the same time he’s holding himself back.

Bowie extricates himself from Pete’s lap, walks directly over to Patrick, and lies down on his feet. Bowie licks the leg of Patrick’s pants lovingly.

“Look, even Bowie thinks it’s a good plan,” Pete laughs. “I don’t care about anything that came before. I lost you, Patrick.” Pete taps his temple, indicating the gaping holes in his memory. “I’m not going to lose you again. Come here.”

Gingerly, Patrick untangles from Bowie (who rolls over, offering his belly to Andy, tongue flopping out of his mouth with his goofy dog smile) and comes to crouch beside Pete’s wheelchair.

“I can see in your eyes that you want to say yes,” Pete says softly. “Let me convince you.”

Patrick closes his eyes. Pete catches his chin in one hand. He lets out a small sigh, tips his head to receive Pete’s kiss.

Patrick is trembling. Pete starts slow, feeling the urge to be gentle with this suddenly fragile man. He kisses Patrick slowly, sweetly, chastely. He feels Patrick relax when he breaks the kiss. Patrick’s golden lashes flutter. He opens his eyes.

“Oh,” Patrick whispers. His cheeks glow pink with the blush of blood.

“Yes,” agrees Pete. Their second kiss is far less chaste, bursting bright and hot and urgent. Patrick kisses him desperate. Worlds begin and end in this kiss. Pete finds it hard to believe he could ever have forgotten a single kiss like this.

“Marry me,” Pete urges again, in the dazzled aftermath.

Faintly, Patrick says, “Suddenly I can’t think of a single reason not to.”

*

Pete’s sister helps spruce him up for the ceremony. Patrick’s friend Andy has been dispatched to a pawn shop for rings—Patrick says they hadn’t gotten any yet, leaving Pete’s memory of a gold-and-diamond engagement band unaccounted for—and Pete’s mother is decorating the chapel from the gift shop. Bowie will be the ringbearer. Pete dimly almost-recalls, somewhere out in the fog, planning something huge, glitzy, elaborate—but this feels so much more right for them. It feels—meant. Fated. Foretold in the stars.

Patrick isn’t complaining either. He’s tying and retying his tie in the mirror on the other side of Pete’s hospital suite. Every time Pete looks over there, he blushes and ducks his head, muttering to himself. It is utterly charming.

Hillary has done just about everything she can with the gown and the flannel, the only clothes Pete has here. She helps him shave while Pete complains about it.

“I have amnesia, not a slow bleed in my motor cortex. Don’t see why you’re making me roll down the aisle and not walk. Ow! Hill, you missed another spot,” he grouses. He’s beaming. For a man who was recently in a hit and run accident and then coma, he feels incredibly lucky.

“We don’t know what all parts of your brain were damaged,” Hillary shoots back. “Like hell am I giving you a razor. I like this one a lot better than your last boyfriend,” she adds.

The fog squeezes Pete’s chest, a flash of panic. He can’t remember—can’t remember any boyfriends since high school. His mouth goes dry. How old is he? So many pieces are missing. It is crazy, to get married when his brain is basically a piece of Swiss cheese?

Patrick crosses the room, lightly squeezes Pete’s shoulder. “It is outrageous how good you look in this ridiculous get-up,” Patrick says. His voice is warm and tinged with awe.

No, Pete decides, it’s not crazy. Patrick is the only thing in all this mess he feels sure of, that makes sense.

“Ready?” Pete asks, putting his hand on top of Patrick’s, meeting the man’s eyes in the mirror. Patrick’s face looks unguarded, happy.

“Nope,” Patrick laughs. “So let’s go be reckless.”

“I’m the best worst thing that hasn’t happened to you yet,” grins Pete.

“Wow, what a great note to start a marriage on,” Hillary butts in sarcastically. “You guys really are meant to be.”

Patrick takes the handles of Pete’s wheelchair, leans in and presses a quick kiss to his temple, and away they go.

*

They wait at the entryway of the chapel. Hillary has already gone down the aisle with a get-well bouquet and a mylar balloon; they watch Andy lead Bowie down the aisle next. The hospital rabbi, the only holy man they could find on such short notice who was not a homophobe, breaks character to squat down and pat Bowie on the head. While they wait for their cue to head down the aisle together, Patrick asks, “So what’s this your sister was saying about a boyfriend?”

Pete opens his mouth to answer but someone else beats him to it. From behind them, a voice snaps, “ _Fianc_ _é_ _._ What the fuck is this about a _wedding_?”

It’s a familiar voice. Pete whips around in his wheelchair seat. One look at the man in the doorway—a tall man with a tall forehead and taller hair, dressed in black torn-kneed jeans, a leopard-print shirt, and a white sateen jacket—and a tidal wave of memory just fucking bowls him over.

Ah, fuck. _Brendon_.

Brendon, who he met at an old-fashioned nightclub, working as a bartender and a lounge singer. Brendon, who had the loveliest singing voice he’d ever heard. Brendon, who started out a shy poet and performance artist, was discovered, made it big, and grew unflatteringly into himself—into a devastatingly handsome, larger-than-life prima donna with a drinking problem. Brendon, whose gold shoes Bowie terrorized in their ongoing turf war over Pete’s apartment. Brendon, who Pete clearly remembers meeting, wooing, and falling in love with. He remembers their first kiss and their last fuck. He remembers getting down on one knee and proposing to Brendon in a lit-up botanical garden at night, in _exactly_ the way he does not remember proposing to Patrick. He remembers the day Brendon moved in and the day he moved out again. Pete _remembers_.

Fog breaks and swirls and forms again, all around him. Pete suddenly feels very weak, not unlike he’s been hit with a car. (He would know.) He’s grateful for the wheelchair after all. Patrick’s hand has fallen off his shoulder, a loss he regrets sharply.

The wedding march, coming tinny out of the rabbi’s phone, begins over again. They’ve missed their fucking cue.

“I don’t remember a lot right now,” Pete says, hating the shake in his own voice, “but I remember you leaving me pretty clearly.”

“Barely a month ago!” cries Brendon. He brandishes his left hand, flashing the gold-and-diamond engagement band that Pete so vividly remembers proposing with, the one he thought it odd that Patrick wasn’t wearing. He thinks it even odder that he would have given it to Brendon when Patrick exists.

“Uh, gentlemen?” calls Rabbi Joe from the front of the chapel. Pete’s whole family, including Bowie, are staring at the clusterfuck unfolding back here. “Are you coming?”

Brendon, quickly escalating into a dramatic rage that feels all too familiar, stalks up the aisle. The wedding march barrels on, sounding more and more like an insane carnival ride. “What the fuck is this?” Brendon demands of the curly-headed rabbi. Whirling back to Pete: “You’re not Jewish and you’re not fucking getting married!”

“I really, really am,” says Pete. “We broke up, Bren. I’m pretty sure we had good reasons.”

“We _separated_. Hearing that you were hurt—that you could have died—I made some mistakes, Pete. I came here to ask you to take me back. Not to _interrupt your goddamn wedding_. Look—you’re still wearing my necklace, so don’t even say you’re over me. Call off this whole impulsive rebound wedding thing and let’s—talk, okay?” Brendon is pacing up and down the aisle, tearing at his hair, gesticulating wildly. Pete’s almost impressed by how much energy and pizzazz he’s putting into this performance.

But only almost. Pete’s not interested in the theatrics—he seems to remember quite a lot of theatrics in his relationship with Brendon—or in the tangled-up feelings he recalls having for this ridiculous, talented, beautiful, shrill forehead of a person. Pete’s stuck in the fog. Or—he’s stuck in the middle of that same field as before, only most of the fog has burned off. Only the smallest pockets of fog remain, slowly rising like smoke and spinning to disappear in the light of a timid new sun. None of the remaining puddles of fog are big enough to contain Patrick. Pete’s memory is coming back, and he can’t find Patrick in it—anywhere.

He _feels_ Patrick. He feels Patrick in his heart. He loves him implicitly, like a behavior so overlearned it’s become a reflex. He is so overwhelmed by all of this that he can barely speak.

“Patcakes,” he says, voice cracking. The hideous wedding march grates on like the house music of a macabre, war-torn cabaret. “Patrick. I don’t remember you.”

Tears glitter on Patrick’s pink cheeks, another terrible incongruity of this decompensating moment. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I never meant—I’m nobody. I’m just a liar you—you never knew. I didn’t mean to—” Patrick’s voice breaks. “Fall for you.”

It’s a whisper, so quiet Pete’s not sure he’s even heard it. He can’t ask Patrick to repeat himself because all his mouth will do is hang open. “But I _know_ you,” he says at last.

“No,” says Patrick. “You don’t.”

And before anyone can possibly process any part of this insane situation, Patrick turns away from Pete and Pete’s family and the baffled rabbi and Bowie and Andy and the sexy teakettle Pete used to date. He turns his back on all of them, picking up speed as he goes.

Pete wracks his brain for a memory, any memory, even one tiny memory of Patrick. Patrick runs away. The wedding march still plays. Pete never wants to hear it again. He is weak in a wheelchair with the last of memories coming back. Patrick is not in them. Not anywhere.

It feels like the silence will stretch on forever, the hellish carousel wheeze of the wedding march all the sound that’s left in the universe. Then Andy breaks the long, terrible moment.

“Well, I’ll be going, then. Uh—do you still want me to dogsit, or…?”

Brendon snatches the lead from Andy’s hand, though he stands notably far from the big slobbery poofball. “Get away from the fucking dog,” he says.

Rabbi Joe clears his throat loudly at the profanity. Brendon just scowls at him. Pete’s survival instincts take over. Flight— _definitely_ flight.

He wheels himself backwards out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen. I promise you I love and want only good things for Brendon Urie. I just--I needed a diva for this. I couldn't break Joe's heart _again_. Thank you so so much for reading; you guys fill me with joy and bandom healing. Chapter last coming soon.  <3


	3. Chapter 3

Scum of the earth Patrick Stump cries into a pint of ice cream. Andy keeps patting his arm stiffly, like he watched a YouTube video once on human comfort and he’s just doing the best he can.

“I’m basically a supervillain,” Patrick wails. “Look, I even _stole his fucking diary_ so he wouldn’t find me out. What kind of manipulative Doctor Octopus bullshit—what did I think was going to happen? That we were gonna get married, live happily ever after? I don’t even _know_ this person, Andy!”

Andy picks up the diary off Patrick’s coffee table. “Do you want me to read it to you? Bet you’d get to know him pretty quickly.”

Patrick smacks the book out of Andy’s hand. “You are _not_ helping.”

“This was the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done in your life, Stump. You did it for a reason,” Andy says. Andy is frustrating, no good at comfort. Patrick needs more friends. Like, even one other friend.

“I felt so guilty. I thought he’d die. I couldn’t leave him.  And then his family got there—and it seemed to help them so much, to have me to clutch on to and wail, I never intended—and then he woke up, Andy, and he’s _fucking wonderful_ , he’s the most perfect person I’ve _ever met_ , and—and I just kept not saying no. I got chance after chance to tell the truth, to get out of there. And instead I just kept going in deeper.” Patrick buries his face in his hands and moans. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“Well, you’re never going to kill Spiderman like this,” says Andy. “Do you think maybe you should call him? Try and—explain yourself? Maybe think of something more convincing than what you just told me?”

“ _I don’t even have his phone number_ ,” Patrick wails.

“You were gonna marry someone who isn’t even a contact in your phone? Huh,” comments Andy. “I cannot stress enough how unlike you this all is.”

“I’m new to fucking dastardly deeds and villainy. I’m an early career psychopath.”

“Kinda seems more like—love at first sight?”

Patrick throws his spoon in Andy’s general direction. He doesn’t want to hear a fucking word of this. He just wants to—to feel sorry for himself and drown in self-loathing in peace.

“I mean, whichever it is, you’re terrible at it,” Andy adds. “If that helps.”

It does not help.

*

Patrick has no idea what the fuck to do with himself or how to make sense of his life, and he’s not going anywhere _near_ his feelings, maybe ever again, so he just—picks up where he left off. Tries to return to normalcy.

He’s not ready to go back to work, so he gets the rings from Andy—attractive platinum bands—and figures he’ll take them back to the pawn shop. Might as well return them. He certainly won’t be using them anytime soon.

He’s too afraid to pick up his car from the impound lot, so he walks. He’s still surprised his face isn’t up on a Wanted poster, that no one’s coming to arrest him for his reckless fucking vehicular assault on a pedestrian. Not to prematurely rule out the likelihood that Pete will press charges.

Fuck, fuck. Another thing he’s not going to think about is Pete.

Patrick is dressed in his depression sweatpants, his unwashed hair stuffed under a brimmed beanie, with eyes puffy from crying and lack of sleep. He’s returning _two wedding rings, unused_ like a fucking Hemingway short story. Everyone who sees him can tell that this is not his best day.

Patrick met someone spectacular, nearly killed him, lied, manipulated, fell in love, actually assumed someone else’s identity, and then lost his love all in the course of, fuck, two shitty days. So no. He’s not all right, and he doesn’t want to talk about it. Sensing this, pedestrians actually part to avoid him on the sidewalk. This is the only thing in the universe Patrick is grateful for.

He’s staring at his feet, trying not to make eye contact and trying not to cry, two tasks that take up all available brain bandwidth. Because of this, he walks right into the opening door of the pawn shop; he takes the edge of the door between the eyes and fucking eats pavement. “Oh, shit!” yelps whoever was exiting the pawn shop.

Patrick sees stars and not much else. His face is an eclipse of pain. The bridge of his nose is wet with blood. As his vision clarifies, a white fuzzy shape comes into focus above him.

Patrick’s brain buffers. It’s an animal. A dog. A large white dog.

“Bowie?” Patrick croaks.

Bowie, and worse: because the dog did not walk himself to the pawn shop. “Oh my god, Patrick, are you okay? Fuck!” Kneeling next to the dog, flapping over Patrick in panic and concern, is the last person Patrick ever expected to see again.

Bowie, and Pete.

Patrick sits up, Pete’s hands on his shoulders guiding him. Blood drips onto Patrick’s belly from his face. He doesn’t want to look at Pete and cannot look away.

Pete is dressed in real clothes again, jeans and combat boots and an incredibly flattering grey sweater. Just as he was in a hospital gown, he is the single most attractive human Patrick has ever seen.

“If you wanted to go ahead and bash me with that door five to ten more times,” says Patrick miserably, “I could maybe look you in the eyes, like, ever again. Or at least be unconscious for whatever comes next.”

Pete is using the sleeve of his sweater, pulled down over his fist, to soak up Patrick’s blood. Patrick is staining it hopelessly. It is another thing to feel guilty about, another fucking albatross to bear unto his fucking grave. Patrick doesn’t know if he should cry or laugh. “Please stop being nice to me,” he manages, his voice caught somewhere between the two.

“I came here looking for you,” Pete says. Pete keeps bobbing and weaving his head around, trying to trick Patrick into meeting his eyes. “I didn’t know where to go—didn’t know anything about you—but I thought maybe the pawn shop guy would remember Andy, or—” He cuts off his ramble, takes Patrick’s chin forcefully, and jerks Patrick’s head upright. Pete stares directly into Patrick’s soul. His eyes are the clearest, lightest brown. He is so absurdly beautiful.

Patrick blinks tears from his eyes. Each passing moment is the worst he’s ever endured. There are not words to address what he’s done.

“Why?” Patrick asks. His voice is a broken thing. “You have someone glamorous and high-pitched to marry. You have a dog and a life and a family. If you’re not here to brain me repeatedly with this door, I don’t—I don’t know what you could possibly want from the person who deceived and took advantage of you.”

“Is that what you are?” Pete’s voice is kind. His face is concerned. It is terrible, terrible. Bowie chooses this moment to lick the inside of Patrick’s ear. Pete shoulders the dog away, dabs at a stray drop of blood on Patrick’s cheek. “Here I thought you were the person I loved so quickly that it was the same as remembering you, the man I fell impossibly in love with from inside a foggy dream. The guy who left me at the altar, by the way.”

“ _I hit you with my car!_ ” The words just bust out of him.

Pete cocks his head to the side, still smiling. “I figured. How else would you end up at my bedside? I didn’t think you were just like, lurking in the ER looking for a date.”

“Why are you being so calm about all of this?” Patrick himself is getting increasingly high-pitched. If he hadn’t so recently made an attempt on Pete’s life, he’d reach out and shake him.

“Do you feel it, Patrick?”

Patrick opens his mouth to shriek some more and Pete kisses him roughly, dazzling him into silence. “Do you _feel_ it,” Pete asks again. He takes Patrick’s hand and presses it over his heart. Patrick can feel it race.

“Because when I look at you, I _feel_ something. You feel _right_ to me, Patrick. More right than anything else in my life. More true than any of the memories that I’ve recovered. More _real_ than—any of it.” The words come out in a low, husky rush. “And I need you to tell me. If you feel it too.”

Patrick closes his eyes. All those days of lying were so much easier than the telling the truth now. “Yes,” he says. “I feel it.”

“Then maybe don’t return those rings just yet,” Pete says. “Because I wouldn’t bet that we won’t need them.”

Against all odds, Patrick is laughing when his eyes blink open again. Pete just kneels there on the sidewalk, grinning at him, blood on his sweater and Bowie panting open-mouthed beside him. “Are you—was that—did you just _propose_ to me?”

Pete shrugs one shoulder. He’s laughing too. “I mean, maybe let’s try a second date first,” he says. “But yeah, Patrick. I’m fucking serious about you.”

“Serious as a car crash?” Patrick can’t help himself. He can’t believe a minute of this. He can’t believe the fucking world. He can’t stop laughing. Somehow, somehow, he is—so, so happy.

“And a coma,” Pete agrees. “Now come on. Please stop bleeding all over the sidewalk and let me take you to dinner.”

Patrick says the only stupid thing he can think of, which is, “I’m not dressed for dinner.”

Pete’s face disappears behind a filthy, wicked grin. “Then let me take you home,” he says.

And honestly? With the week he’s having? It’s not the craziest idea Patrick’s ever heard.

 

_end_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No one can ever say I don't write happy endings. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, fandom darlings!

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS FOR READING! I had so much fun writing this one, I hope you like it too. Be back soon with chapter next, and in the meantime, let's all go back to listening to Young Menace on loop.
> 
> Ten thousand thanks to [immoral-crow](http://archiveofourown.org/users/immoral_crow/) for being an amazing beta and better friend.


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